Keep showing up # Retargeting ads on Google and Meta for _the people who already found you_ Most people who find a local business do not call the first time. Retargeting shows a short video from you to the people who visited your site or watched your video, on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, for a small budget. It is the fifth part of my plan, after the ranking work, and it does not move your Maps position. **Brandon Medina**, founder of BCM Results, Boston. Published September 19, 2026. Most people who find your business do not call the first time. They search, open two or three listings, get pulled away, and they are gone. Retargeting is how you keep showing up to those people after they leave. They see a short video from you on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and when they are finally ready, yours is the name they remember. I am Brandon Medina. I run BCM Results from Framingham, Massachusetts, and I work with local businesses anywhere. Retargeting is the fifth of six parts in my plan. It comes after the ranking work, not instead of it. ## Why most people do not buy the first time Think about the last time you looked for a plumber or a dentist. You looked at a few, then you stopped. Maybe the price felt like a lot. Maybe you got busy. You were not ready yet. Your customers do the same thing. They find you on Google Maps, read your reviews, click your website, and leave. Most of them mean to come back. Most of them forget. If they search again next week, they might click a different business, because to a stranger the three names in the top 3 look the same. Retargeting fixes the forgetting part. ## What retargeting is, in plain words Retargeting means showing ads only to people who already found you. Not strangers. Here is how it works: - A small piece of code on your website (the Meta pixel and the Google tag) notes when someone visits. - Google and Meta each build a list from those visits. That list is called a custom audience. - You run ads to that list only, on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. - Someone who fills out your form lands on a thank you page, and that visit is counted as a result. The audiences I build come from two places. **Site visits:** anyone who opened your website over the last month or so. **Video views:** anyone who watched a good chunk of a video from you. I also take out the people who already filled out your form. There is no point paying to remind a customer who already asked for a quote. ## The budget: small on purpose Retargeting is cheap next to cold ads because the list is small. You are not paying to reach a whole city, only the people who already looked at you. In my plan the retargeting budget is ten to twenty percent of what a cold campaign would cost, agreed on before anything starts. Two settings keep it from wasting money: - **Awareness objective.** On Meta the campaign is set to Awareness, with the goal of reaching as many people on the list as possible. You are not paying per new click. You are paying to be seen by warm people. - **Frequency cap.** A limit on how many times one person sees your ad in a given period. Enough to be remembered, not enough to annoy. ## The creatives: a person talking to the camera The ad that works best is not a polished commercial. It is you, or someone on your team, talking to the phone camera for about a minute, with captions. I ask for several videos, because a person who sees the same clip over and over stops noticing it: - **The reminder.** Who you are, what you do, where you do it, and how to reach you. - **Objection videos.** One short video per reason people hesitate. Price, timing, "do I really need this", "what if it goes wrong". You answer the question they had when they left your site. - **The proof.** A walk through a finished job, in your own words. Each video gets exported vertical for Stories, Reels and Shorts, and square and landscape for feeds. ## Where the ads show | Platform | Where the ad appears | The list it uses | |---|---|---| | Google Ads | YouTube, before and between videos, and in Shorts | People the Google tag saw on your site | | Meta Ads | Instagram and Facebook feed, Stories and Reels | People the Meta pixel saw on your site, plus people who watched your videos there | Each platform only knows its own list, so both need their code on your site. On the Google side I keep the campaign to YouTube and leave the Display Network and search partners off, so a small budget is not spread across sites your customers never visit. ## The thank you page: how results get counted When someone on the list finally fills out your contact form, they land on a page that says thank you. The pixel and the tag fire there, so Google and Meta count a real result. Without it you only see clicks, and clicks are not customers. That person also comes off the list. This is why the thank you page is part of the [website optimization](https://bcmresultss.com/services/website-optimization/) work in my plan. The ad, the page it points to and the form have to say the same thing, so the person who clicked lands where they expected. ## What retargeting does not do - **It does not move your Maps position.** Google's help page on local ranking says local results come from relevance, distance and prominence. Ads are not on that list. You can pay for retargeting all year and stay ninth. - **It does not bring new people.** The list is made of people who already found you. If nobody is finding you, there is nobody to retarget. - **It does not fix a weak site.** If the person clicks back to a page with no address, no map and no clear next step, the reminder was wasted. ## Where it sits in my plan My plan has six parts, in this order: the Google Business Profile rebuilt category by category, the website, a review system your team can run, citations cleaned up, retargeting, and a dated rank grid screenshot every month. Retargeting is fifth on purpose. The first four parts are the work behind [getting into the top 3 on Google Maps](https://bcmresultss.com/services/google-maps-ranking/). Retargeting only multiplies what those parts already produce. I am in Framingham, and a business near me in [Framingham](https://bcmresultss.com/framingham/), [Boston](https://bcmresultss.com/boston/) or [Cambridge](https://bcmresultss.com/areas/cambridge/) gets the same plan, in the same order, as a business in another state. The place changes the search, not the order of the work. ## How it works in my plan - **The ranking work goes first.** Profile, website, reviews, citations. By the time retargeting starts, your site has the form, the thank you page and the map, and the pixel and the tag are on every page. - **The lists build.** Site visitors and video viewers collect on their own while the rest of the plan runs. No ad spend yet. - **You film the videos.** I send you the questions to answer and how to hold the phone. You talk. I edit, caption and export each one. Filming a few short clips is the one extra ask this step adds. - **Campaigns go live.** One awareness campaign on Meta, one video campaign on Google. Custom audiences only. Frequency cap on. Budget written into the one page plan before anything starts. - **Results are counted on the thank you page.** We look at form fills, not clicks or likes. - **Swap what stops working.** When a video gets tired, a new one goes in. The one that produced the most form fills stays. In general, ad spend is paid to Google and Meta from your own ad accounts. My flat monthly rate is quoted in writing before we start and locked for as long as we work together. The number is given on the call. ## A checklist you can use yourself Whether you hire me or do it yourself, a working setup has all of these: - Meta pixel and Google tag on every page of the site, including the thank you page. - A custom audience of site visitors on both platforms, and one of video viewers on Meta. - People who reached the thank you page taken out of both audiences. - Campaign objective set to Awareness on Meta, reach as the goal, not clicks. - A frequency cap, so one person does not see the same ad every day. - Budget at ten to twenty percent of a cold budget, agreed in writing. - Several videos of a real person talking to the camera, one per common objection. - The Google campaign kept to YouTube, with the Display Network and search partners off. - Ads pointing to a page with one clear form and a thank you page that counts the fill. - The ranking work done first, so the list is not empty. ## Questions people ask **Will retargeting get me into the top 3 on Google Maps?** No. Google's help page on local ranking lists relevance, distance and prominence, and ads are not part of that. The profile, the website, the reviews and the citations are what move your position, and those come first in my plan. **How much should I spend on retargeting?** Ten to twenty percent of what a cold campaign would cost. The list is only the people who already visited your site or watched your video, so it does not take much to reach all of them a few times. The exact amount goes into the one page plan you approve before any money moves. **Do I have to be on camera?** It works best when a real person from the business talks to the camera, usually the owner. It can be someone on your team the customers meet. A phone, daylight, captions, and you answering the question people ask most is the whole recipe. **Can I skip the ranking work and just run retargeting?** You can, but the list would be nearly empty. If your business is not showing up on Maps and the website gets few visits, there is nobody to retarget. That is why it is fifth in my plan, after the work that gets you found. **How long before retargeting brings in a customer?** I do not promise a date. The list has to fill up first, and that depends on how many people find you, which is what the earlier steps are for. Results are counted on the thank you page and reviewed each month next to the rank grid. **Do you only do this for businesses in Boston?** No. I am based in Framingham, west of Boston, and I work with local businesses anywhere. The setup is the same wherever you are. What changes is the search your customers type and the map Google draws around them, and that is handled in the ranking work. If you want to know whether retargeting is the right next step for your business, or whether the ranking work has to come first, send me your details through the [free marketing analysis](https://bcmresultss.com/#contact) and I will reply by email within two business days. ## Want to know where you stand? I send a free marketing analysis for your business within 2 business days: where you rank from different spots in your area, what your listing is missing, and what the site should change. No cost, no obligation. [Get the free analysis](https://bcmresultss.com/#contact) [See the plan](https://bcmresultss.com/local-visibility/) Brandon Medina I run BCM Results in Massachusetts. I help local businesses improve and measure their Google visibility. The written terms define a 90-day top-three goal and pause billing if that goal is not reached. Six public website examples are linked from the Work section on the home page.